Open letter to NC soft Korea and Innova Team

Open letter to NC soft Korea and Innova Team

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After this patch, a lot has become clear to me now,
Especially since I only came back after a 2 years absence of Guildwars 2 playing.
Wich is very relevant for this letter and will benefit the services of all kinds of NC soft.


Here are my observations:


After the chronicle Goddess of Destruction, Lineage 2 went "free 2 Play".
An initial concept that was welcomed because we needed more players.
This concept was taken of Guildwars 2, with the difference that Guildwars 2 was free to play from day 1.
In itself you would not see a big difference but there is a huge difference to start with.
When a game starts of free, it draws to itself to be a self sufficient game, which means each class can cope on its own, this is not the case in Lineage 2.


What do I mean by this ?
In Guildwars 2, even if u keep soloing forever, u WILL be able to get all the money u need, u will be able to level, u will be able to do instances and storylines and all quests, and if you are really good u can even do all the dungeons alone.
No matter wich class you are.


Lineage 2 is a dependant game, u depend on others, u depend on a healer, u depend on a buffer, u depend on a clan for raids and other things.


So being independent like in Guildwars 2, is not possible in Lineage 2.
In a free 2 play game , this is terrible, this kills the goal of free to play, because you aren't exactly, u are depending.
Now I hear a lot of you think free to play is that you don't buy subscription fee, well not exactly, the free 2 play concept is a little bit a more elaborate package and concept that Guildwars 2 thought of then just that.


Because remember WHY Lineage 2 wanted to imitate the Guildwars 2 example in the first place, to make more money.


They saw that Guildwars 2 even though free to play made more money then their subscribers from Lineage 2, and Guildwars 2 continues to beat them on that today.


What Lineage 2 doesn't understand is that Guildwars 2 does this by applying the following saying that Lineage 2 should learn from.


"u do not catch flies with vinegar , u catch them with honney'.


Let's elaborate and compare shall we ?


Point 1 Gold and Items:


Guildwars 2 free to play , changes in drop rates went up when they saw that botters were selling gold and items.
result in Guildwars 2, practically no bots or goldsellers.


Lineage 2 went free 2 play, drop rates went down, adena was seriously nerfed, botters mass produced and are bigger by 10 fold of the Lineages 2 live player population and adena sellers keep popping up on every corner of Aden and even more in websites.
This had a tremendous impact on the packets Lineage 2 tries to sell trough NC coins , because players found out it is cheaper to buy adena then to buy the NC coins packs for 100% adena drops.

Point 2 Quests and instances/storylines.


Guildwars 2 quests are simple to get , level according and all quests can be done within 30 minutes to 45 minutes maximum, because Guildwars 2 decrees that people have real life, kids , homework , a movie to watch.
So they tend to keep daily's fast and easy, and they keep simplifying them and giving greater variety with bigger rewards with each patch.


Lineage 2 on the other hand tends to nerf everything and make it all a whole lot harder with each patch, quests from adventure guides deleted or so long they can take up to 2 hours or more to complete like the quests at shrine of loyalty, the rewards are lesser and lesser, which makes people give up, no one wants to spend hours on quests where u need 77 items and u only get one item once every 30 monsters.
If by all intent they wanted us to hunt more, they should have increased the number from 77 to like 300, and adapt a bigger reward as well.


Point 3 Class imbalance


Guildwars 2 has a forum that is actually being red by its developers , and if a skills is too powerful after a patch or an item gives too much or too few, it gets updated within a week.


Lineage 2, classes are being ignored for a long time, Prophet, healers mostly. No one ever gets rewards for heals or resurrects.
Some classes are just what u call one shot classes but can't be killed almost, and then there is the question of gear that is only possible to get if u are in big clans, which at limit is still fine because that is not always what makes you win or lose.
But there is serious imbalance, especially after 85, every class should have some form of self-heal, to be self sufficient, and some basic buffs like might and shield, be it the high level ones.


Point 4 PVP


Guildwars 2 pvp, u have instances, rewards , ranking on a website, gold titles, gear, everything a pvp'er can dream of.


Lineage 2 pvp, u get Olympiad with some rewards if u slave your self into Olympiad. that is the only positive note I have on PVP.
PVP should be without xp loss, then there would be a whole lot more pvp going on.
Also in Lineage 2 as a healer in pvp, u can heal all you want, resurrect as the best, u wont earn any pvp-score from that.
If you have any more notes please feel free to do so, remember that I wrote this article because Lineage 2 doesn't understand why Guildwars 2 makes more money then them.
I was just friendly enough to point out why


One advice Lineage 2 Korea :
You want to make more money ?
Do this :
Reinstate the full 100 % drop rate of adena and items.
Release a bonus pack to buy with NC coins that gives 200%
Give 3 daily quests to do at all levels that give adena , xp,and random items
Levels that need the daily quests are : 45-55-60-65-68-70-72-75-76 for the lower levels
80-82-84-85 for a smooth transition to get awakening.
and then more quests like 4 daily's at 86- 87- 88 -89
For higher levels 90 + 2 daily quests a day that are way better then the ones we have now, go look how guildwars 2 does it.


My best regards, from a disappointed Lineage2 player that returned to have fun, but found only nerf.

 

Amen

 

For the first time reivax made a post that is actually readable and gramma ain't that bad. GJ sir.
On topic: too much comparison between two different games. FYI GW2 and L2 had quite same revenue on 2016.

 

The game is fine when it's hard but i agree with some points.

Drop rates are ridiculous and needs to be buffed urgently to promote manual playing.
On innova there are no bots and they are taken care of. If they are scared of bots they should watch for bots and IP ban them and ppl will think twice.

PvP needs more balance

L2store needs a massive nerf

Quests are ******* boring and unnecessary

All and all, promote fair play and balance between donators/non-donators give everyone an equal ground make some changes to classes without being ridiculous, buff manual playing drops and nerf donation accessible drops. Worse part is the upcoming patch is nerfing drops again so i am 50-50 thinking if i will continue playing or quit like a sane man would. Tired of being treated like garbage by a game that i pay PA for just because i don't have 1000 euros per month to dedicate to it.

 

A "litle" bit too late for these open letters, imo.

Lineage 2, from the start, had 3 major problems:
The grind, over dependence on buffs, and class balance.
The grind was a damn big hill, took time to climb, was hard, sometimes you would fall a bunch of metters in the process but was satisfying to get to the top.
The necessity of buffs was always there, be it PvE or PvP. (i still remember the "yells" for CoV. those were the days)
Class balance was always.. what the hell, there was none.

Did the developers try to fix these problems? Yep. They did.
Vitality was added, along with herbs and some more stuff

All buffers got the same buffs so you wouldnt need to wait half an hour to get a specific buffer.[rant] This screwed sws and bds as they got shoved into the buffer slot, and not made into a dps class similar to the tyrrs, but with some party wide buffs (inspector type) and debuffs. (that tyrrs should not have access into). Instead all classes that depend on melee dps got screwed as the game (pvp) is all about alpha/burst damage. [/rant]

Class balance, iirc, they did try to balance classes before. (i guess they used oly as a template? dont remember) but overall, gear always played a big part in class balance. Balancing classes, w/o balancing gear doesnt do anything.

Was it enough? Hell no!

Now.. What people need to understand is that this game will never get "fixed". Devs will not "listen" to the changes that players/comunity want to be put in the game. Why? Because most of the money they (devs) make is out of what is considered bad/broken by the players.

TL.DR: NCSoft transformed this game by infecting it with mobile gaming practices. They make money. They will not change a thing, unless it is to bring them more money.

 

I play GW2 aswell and and I love it. At the same time I love how different and grindy L2 is. I totally agree. Hard game can be fun, I like the grind, time investment and challenge, but currently it's damn impossible and pretty frustrating.
Broken classes and mechanics can even themselves out, if the game forces "group content only", like L2 does it. But, when you introduce those broken donations, then all the fun is over. At the most, players who have PA and buy some cosmetic items like me, can only be that +1 in big PVP fights. Forget about being in competitive small pvp parties or oly. That's the truth and I'm very sad what my first online game ever has become.